That said, Jeff Vogel has spoken at length [0] about how he’s stayed in business for 30-ish years with a middle class lifestyle. Including the lean times.
I think it’s pretty inspirational that there’s a way to make game development work if your primary goal isn’t getting rich, but to have a comfortable life and enjoy what you do.
Likely because you didn't dedicate yourself to learning video production and weren't good enough at playing video games to sell yourself as some sort of professional video game promoter. I'm not sure why you think either of these guys work any less hard than you do.
Honestly that's kinda the impressive part, most restaurant businesses fail and those that don't usually aren't even that successful.
EDIT: Apparently he advertises their hot sauce
edit: I will say though, you don't have to make those ADHD type videos with screaming and quick cuts. There are other technical youtubers that are slower like Applied Science, Great Scott, 3 blue 1 brown, etc...
This, you can make make good content and people will watch it. What a lot of aspiring youtubers don't realize is that good production (sound, lighting, animation, video quality in general, etc.) goes a long ways towards helping people find your content engaging. Luck is necessary too, but most of the big youtubers work a lot harder than those of us working normal 9-5s.
I wouldn't be surprised if the "it" part can be generated by some llm.
But there are successful channels like Neural Viz though I think that still takes script writing